When I was on vacation earlier this month, I read some e-books on writing. Even though these gems were inexpensive and quick, they provided me with some valuable lessons to apply to my writing craft.

Here they are:

Self-publishing a BookBy Hank Quense
Quense has a great series on self-publishing and this is the second one I’ve read. He’s great about explaining why he does it the way he does, but let’s the reader know everyone needs to self-publish the way that is best for himself. Good advice on what publisher to use. I will be coming back to this book as a reference.

2K to 10K: Writing Faster, Writing Better, and Writing More of What You LoveBy Rachel Aaron
I loved Aaron’s Eli Monpress series and I can’t wait to read more of her stuff. She gives advice on how to increase the amount of writing that gets done during a writing session by applying her triangle of knowledge, time and enthusiasm. Now, if that sounds vague, she does get specific about what they mean in this book.

Writing from the Middle: A New Approach for Plotters, Pantsers and Everyone In BetweenBy James Scott BellI love Kill Zone, a blog for which Bell contributes as part of a community of writers. This book provided a fascinating piece of advice about character development for novel writing: the “Mirror Moment.” Once again, it’s something I knew already, but didn’t know I knew. This quick read will change the way you plan your novel–and it’s easy to apply to a draft you’ve already started.

Ancillary Justice by Ann LeckieGenre: Science Fiction; Space OperaA starship, thousands of years old, has been dismantled and its memories downloaded into one of its mechanic beings that seeks revenge. First of all, the narrator of this story is the starship who cannot distinguish gender, so every character is male, although some of them are actually female. This makes the story both clever and confusing. Clues exist to should which are female, but then the question arises: does it really matter?

Annihilationby Jeff VanderMeerGenre: Science Fiction
Series: Southern Reach #1Area X has been cut off from civilization for years and everyone who goes in either disappears or goes insane when they return. While I enjoyed this well-written episode in this series, I felt unable to really care about the characters. I can see why this series is popular, but I probably won’t read the rest of the books in it.

Armada by Ernest Cline
Genre: Science FictionOne day, teen nerd Zach Lightman sits in class bored to death and the next he finds himself fighting off invading aliens and asking, “How did I get here?” It seems every science fiction book, movie and tv show of the past several decades have actually been training modules for earthlings to fight off the nasty lizard beings heading toward earth. It’s very similar to Ender’s Game and strangely enough, that’s the whole point. I loved, loved, loved Cline’s novel Ready Player One, and even though I get what he was doing in Armada, I thought it lacked something. Not a bad read, but don’t go into it expecting Ready Player One.

The Bone Clocksby David Mitchell
Genre: Urban Fantasy; HorrorA young woman finds herself in the middle of a war between two groups of mystical humans. This ended up being one of my favorite reads in 2015. It’s quite long, but I enjoyed the well-developed characters and storyline that is pieced together with each chapter. And the ending nearly killed me emotionally. Mitchell is the author of A Cloud Atlas, which I have not read, but I’ve heard The Bone Clocks is better.

Cibola Burns and Nemesis Games by James S. A. Corey
Genre: Science Fiction; Space Opera
Series: The Expanse (#4 xand #5 respectively)I will just go ahead and admit this series is currently my favorite in the SF genre. A new tv series based on these books just started on the SyFy channel, which is no surprise; these novels were meant to be adapted for the screen. The last installment, Nemesis Games, is probably my favorite along with the first book in the series. What makes NG special is the revelation of the backgrounds of the main characters. Finally. In the first four books, their histories were only hinted at, but this volume shows more about why they are the way they are. And it’s a pretty epic Apocalyptic story that turns the series in a whole new direction.

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
Genre: Urban Fantasy; Young Adult Fiction
Series: The Mortal Instruments #1Clary Flay is a teen girl who finds out she has a supernatural background. This is the first in a series that falls into the Young Adult Urban Fantasy genre, to which the Twilight series belongs. I’ve never read Twilight. But I did like this book. A movie was made of the book a few years ago and now there is a television show based on the books.

Days Gone Bad by Eric A. Asher
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: Vesik #1Damian Valdis Vesik is a Harry Dresden type modern day wizard who fights the local supernatural bad guys. Okay, I wanted to like this book more than I did. It had great dialogue, characters, and action scenes but I could not figure out who the antagonist was in this novel. The characters are reacting to situations, but I wasn’t sure why. I feel the author should have made the bad guy more tangible. The reviews for the next book in this series are positive, so I’m going to give it another shot because, overall, Asher is a good writer.

Dreamlander by K.M. Weiland
Genre: Fantasy; Urban FantasyEvery time Chris Redston falls asleep, he wakes up in a different reality where he is a messiah figure everyone wants to kill. That would put a cramp in anyone’s day. This ended up being one of my favorites for 2015. Weiland has written several books on the craft of fiction writing, and all her skills are obvious in the execution of this story. If you like swash-buckling adventure, romance and fantasy, you’ll enjoy Dreamlander.

False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen
Genre: Fantasy; Young Adult FictionThe setting is a Middle Earth type world where an orphan boy named Sage is kidnapped and used to replace a prince who’s gone missing. Although I’ve classified this as Fantasy, there is really no magic in this novel, just a great story.

The Giver by Lois Lowry
Genre: Science Fiction; Young Adult FictionI read this about 20 years ago when it first came out and after seeing the 2014 movie, I became inspired to read it again. Having gained twenty years of sorrow and joy, I appreciate this book more. The question of “Why is there pain?” causes more people to lose their faith in a supreme being, causes many people every year to take their own lives, causes the lonely and hurting to fall into the depths of hopelessness. But pain in life is necessary. This book shows why.

Lock In by John Scalzi
Genre: Science Fiction; Murder MysteryA mysterious disease causes a portion of the world’s population to be locked in their bodies, unable to move. Technology is created in which their consciousness is transferred to robotic bodies so they can interact with society. Chris Shane is one of the disease’s victims who finds himself solving a murder in his robotic body. This novel was obviously written to be adapted for television or movies, but that’s okay. It’s a fun read.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Series: The Magicians #1Quinten Coldwater finds himself enrolled in a secretive school for magic. This book has been described as “Harry Potter for adults” and I would say that is a fair assessment. It’s a little dark at some points, and too be honest, the protagonist is kind of hard to like, but overall a good read.

The Martian by Andy Weir
Genre: Science FictionIn the not too distant future, astronaut and botanist, Mark Watney, finds himself accidentally stranded on Mars after his crewmates took off during a sandstorm. The book and the movie follow each other as closely as possible, but the endings are executed slightly differently. If you liked the movie, you’ll love the book as it goes into more detail. Also, the author is fantastic at making the scientific infodumps seem comprehensible.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Genre: Science Fiction; Young Adult FictionThomas wakes up with no memories and finds himself in a strange prison-like environment. Too make things worse, everyone blames him when out of the ordinary things begin to happen. I finally got a chance to read this. I enjoyed it. If you like The Hunger Games or the Divergent series, you’ll like this one. Movies based on this book series have been released–seems like that is the case for many of the books I read in 2015.

The Spirit War and Spirit’s End by Rachel Aaron
Genre: Fantasy
Series: The Legend of Eli Monpress (#4 and #5 respectively)You know how you get sad at the end of a book because you’ll miss the characters so much? That’s me and this series. I finished the last two books of this series and now I’m sad that there are no more stories about Eli Monpress and his associates.

The Unraveling by Hugh Howey
Genre: Science Fiction
Series: Wool #4Post-apocalyptic tale of humans living inside an enormous silo and the rewriting of history by the winners. The author originally wrote this in five parts and then put them together in one volume. Eager to read the last book soon.

In 2003, I started keeping lists of the books I read. I compiled these lists on Amazon.com, but that wasn’t enough. I discovered Goodreads and listed every book I have ever read, including before 2003. Whenever I remember a book I read that hasn’t been listed, say a book I read back in high school or middle school, I add it to the list. As if that wasn’t obsessive compulsive enough, I exported all my books from Goodreads as an Excel spreadsheet and uploaded it to LibraryThing.com. The great thing about LibraryThing.com is all the free book give-aways you can get–as if I needed more books.

Why do I do this? Because I’m weird.

Actually, I’ve discovered that when I look at one of my booklists, I can remember what was happening in my life when I was reading a certain. It’s sort of a diary by way of literature.

So, on this tenth anniversary of keeping obsessive lists of the books I read, I present what I read in 2013. Who knows? You may find something that piques your reading taste buds.

Contemporary FictionPublishing companies marketed these books as main stream fiction, event though some of them could fall into other genres.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Stieg Laarson
This is the third and concluding volume of the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series. I would not recommend reading this unless you have read the others first. Laarson was a master at weaving a thousand details into a story that led to a final conclusion, but to be honest this third volume has so many characters, sometimes I found it hard to keep track of who was who. Overall, a suspenseful series. Unfortunately, the author died at a young age right after completing this series, so, unfortunately, we won’t be seeing any more novels by him.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy
I wanted to read something by this author because a co-worker said her grandson was named after him. Hmm. Although marketed as mainline fiction, it has an post-apocalypse setting, so it kind of also falls under science fiction. A father and son travel on foot through the west coast of the charred remains of the United States. Along the way, they face dangerous obstacles that threaten their relationship of the past, present and future.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
Charlie, the wallflower, goes way beyond typical teen angst as he deals with some serious issues in his early years of high school. Set in 1991, this novel is roughly based on some personal experiences of the author who also directed the movie by the same name. A side note: Charlie reads through his high school book list and fans of the book and movie have compiled it: Charlie’s Reading List. I started reading the books on the list–some of which are mentioned elsewhere in this blog entry.

The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrotta
High expectations were set by the author of this book who received high accolades for his previous novel, Little Children. Well, I haven’t read Little Children but judging from the Amazon reviews of The Abstinence Teacher, the latter was a let down. I can see why. I was hoping for an intelligent story about the controversy of teaching sex education in high school, but instead I got cliches of how this author thinks conservative Christians act. He also had a few cliches about Liberals as well and that’s why I just couldn’t take this book seriously.

Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk
If you’ve heard of or seen the movie Fight Club, then you should know that it was based on a novel by Palahniuk. This is the third book I’ve read by him, and he has definitely got some demons he his dealing with. I would have to say that this is a story of dark satire. It’s wicked and violent, but I found it entertaining. Palahniuk is not for everyone.

Non-fictionI know, I know. I need to read more non-fiction.

Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon
This author discusses ten things nobody told us about being creative. It’s one of those books I wish more people would read, because even though the title implies Steal Like an Artist is for creative types–like painters, musicians and such–the principles in this book are for everyone. A quick read.

I Used to Know That, Caroline Taggart
In my continual attempt to be a renaissance man, I read this book to brush up on the basics of high school education . . . you know, literature, science, math and all that. I’d like to reread this every few years.

When Love Has Gone, Coping With Obsession, Paul Thorn
I had been dealing with some obsessive thoughts so I found this book. It kind of helped. Strange thing: when I tried to find more about the author to see if he had written anything else, I found nothing. This book and its author are hidden away in the web pages of Amazon.com.

Poetry
Even though I enjoy it, I read little poetry. It requires a deliberate sit-down-and-relax attitude which has become a victim of our fast-paced world.

Help! I’m the Leader of a Small Group, Laurie Polich
I started helping with a small group of high school boys at my church, so I checked out this book. I read it through and found it helpful. It’s also handy as a reference tool for ideas.

Toxic Charity, Robert Lupton
I read this for work. If you enjoyed reading When Helping Hurts by Stephen Corbett, then you’d probably be interested in this book. Lupton examines new models for churches to follow for charity and mission trips. I found the book eye-opening and insightful, but some may argue that the author focuses too much on economic suggestions and doesn’t address other ways on which mission needs to focus such as in education and advocacy. Nevertheless, I recommend this book to the head of any mission committee of a church, but be warned: it may say some things today’s churches don’t want to acknowledge.

The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennon Manning
Manning died this year and several of my friends on Facebook mentioned how this book spoke to them. While Manning had a difficult life and struggled with addiction, he reminds us in this book of how God does not expect us to be perfect and can use us to minister to others even with our messy existence.

ClassicsMust read more classics as well, but hey I got some in for this year’s reading.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Yes, I read this book once again because of the much hyped film that came out this year . . . you know, the millionth time The Great Gatsby has been turned into a movie, this time starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby. I like this story. It’s a quick read and my hometown, Louisville, plays a part in it. Part of Charlie’s reading list.

This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald
I had read The Great Gatsby several times over the years and I really wanted to read something else by Fitzgerald. This novel is about Amory Blaine, a somewhat narcisstic, spoiled young man who lived in the years following the first world war and learns some lessons the hard way. Part of Charlie’s reading list.

Speculative Fiction (Science Fiction & Fantasy)Okay, as you can see, I spend most of my time reading science fiction and fantasy. I always say it’s my guilty pleasure.

Proven Guilty, Jim Butcher
This is book eight of The Dresden Files, a series I’ve been reading for the past few years. This time, succubus-type creatures attack a horror film convention and Harry Dresden, modern day wizard, must stop the madness. Butcher continues to define and set the standard of the sub-genre called urban fantasy.

White Knight, Jim Butcher
Book number nine in Butcher’s Harry Dresdon series. Dresden’s half-brother, a vampire, is accused of some horrendous deeds.

Falstaff’s Big Gamble, Hank Quense
Quense took characters from classic mythology and Shakespearian drama to create a brand new story with much hilarity thrown in. Lots of fun to read.

Bearer of the Black Staff, Terry Brooks
In 1977, Brook’s The Sword of Shanarra was published which placed the fantasy genre on the map. Since that year, Brooks has written about a dozen prequals to TSOS and I started reading them in the story’s chronological order. I started about four or five years ago. I have to admit, I always end up liking this authors books as I get into them. For a list to read the books in the correct order, go here.

The Measure of Magic, Terry Brooks
This one finishes the story that Bearer of the Black Staff started.

First King of Shannara, Terry Brooks
The last prequal before Brook’s The Sword of Shannara. With this book, I’ve finished all the prequals after five year

Chasm City, Alastair Reynolds
This is the second book in Reynold’s Revelation Space series, but this book stands alone. It’s part detective novel, part space opera. While it’s heavily plot driven, it’s still fun to read because the author is great at world-building.

Regarding Mikhail, Tom Robson
Can’t remember how I came across this story, but it’s available only as an ebook. The story has similar elements to the movie Total Recall in which a member of the navy of the near future fights rebels on Mars and ends up realizing his memories have been altered by the government.

The Spirit Thief, Rachel Aaron
The first book in the series called The Legend of Eli Monpress in which a young thief with wizard-like powers tries to up the bounty on himself for his own mysterious purposes.

The Spirit Rebellion, Rachel Aaron
The second book in Aaron’s series. I really like these characters. Definitely going to continue reading through her Eli Monpress stories.

The Spirit Eater, Rachel Aaron
Aaron continues her series about Eli Monpress, wizard theif, and reveals a big secret in this story. The author has at least two more books published in this series and I plan to read them in 2014.

Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey
Earth has colonized the solar system and, as with typical of the human race, divided into factions of people-groups who don’t like each other. The delicate relationship is aggrivated when a mysterious virus from a distant galaxy is harvested by a for-profit company that doesn’t care who is affected by its horrendous mutations. The character of Jim Holden and his ragtag crew of the spacecraft Rocinante are introduced in this trilogy of unabashed space opera.

Abaddon’s Gate, James S.A. Corey
The final part of the Expanse trilogy. I recommend this series if you are a space opera fan.

Forbidden, Ted Dekker, Tosca Lee
First in Dekker’s Mortal trilogy, Forbidden sets everything up for the following two book. This is Christian speculative fiction.

Mortal, Ted Dekker, Tosca Lee
Second in the trilogy, Mortal is a step up from the first book. The story really takes off in this book.

Sovereign, Ted Dekker, Tosca Lee
The story wraps up with a few surprises. Highly recommended if you are a fan of books like This Present Darkness.

Additional Comments:

Least Favorite Book of 2013: I would have to say I least enjoyed The Abstinence Teacher. I actually finished the book, and just because I have labeled it my least favorite of the year doesn’t mean it’s not worth a reader’s consideration. I guess I was disappointed because I was expecting something else. I also could not take the characters seriously.

Favorite Series of 2013: I read a lot of novels that are part of a series this past year. I would have to say I most enjoyed The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey. Ted Dekker’s Mortal series and Rachel Aaron’s Legend of Eli Monpress series receive honorable mentions.

Favorite Book of 2013: This surprised myself, but I would have to say my favorite stand alone book I read in 2013 was The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I feel Chbosky captured teen angst in a realistic way, and I didn’t feel like I was reading a book marketed to young adults. Great read for anyone of any age.